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Last year I chose not to attend the Gathering due to the birth of my twins, but this year I was ‘allowed’ to go, though only from Friday to Monday…so I had to make the most of it!

Friday

I flew into London, Ontario so that Sen and I could drive down to Niagara Falls together. We got there late afternoon and we realized that it was the first time we’ve ever been there on the first Friday as it was fairly quiet. With no publishers in sight, we got to have fun and just play games!

We played Deception from Grey Fox Games with Jon Gilmour and a growing group of participants as we played it 4 times in a row. It’s a really fun game that mixes Mysterium with Werewolf. I got to play Azul from Next Move Games with Eric Lang, which was great as I hadn’t had a chance to play this one yet! It’s fun and thinky and a dash of screw you in there. Then Rodney Smith showed up and we played The Mind a few times. This game is super interesting! It’s like The Game, but with no talking! Then we played Deja Vu – and it got crazy as we all fought for the various pieces. We’re not sure if the fighting aspect is in the rules, but I’m sure that’s how I’ll want to play it from now on! I managed to crush everyone as I’m pretty good at speed games.

Saturday

We started our Saturday off with a pitch to Maple Games. We were pitching a game that we recently got back from a publisher that allowed their time to elapse. It’s a 1 vs. many, hidden movement game and it was fun to play this game again. Daryl from Maple Games wants to sign this one asap! He was already familiar with the game because he actually worked at IDW Games as a developer when we first submitted this game, and even back then he was a champion for our game.

Then I saw Peter and Phillip from Eggertspiele and they were free so I showed them In The Hall of the Mountain King designed by Graeme Jahns and myself. They both really enjoyed it and thought it might be a bit too easy for an Eggertspiele game and a bit too hard for a Plan B game, but they liked it enough to seek out Sophie and Martin from Plan B to play it right then. We played it again and it was confirmed that it was indeed to complicated for a Plan B game, so then Sophie left it with Peter to determine if it was good enough for Eggertspiele.

Since we had the attention of Martin from Pretzel, Sen and I showed him all of our expansion cities for Junk Art. It’s always interesting playing and pitching to Martin as he has an amazing brain that can find the most fun and most unique aspects to any game. He liked most of our cities and gave us direction on how to proceed.

By now it was time for our annual tradition where a bunch of us head out to have some yummy wings at Duffs, and then we go to a movie! Usually we try to see a horror movie and this year A Quiet Place just opened, so it was perfect timing. We all seemed to really enjoy the movie even if we had qualms with some of the world building.

When we got back to the hotel, we played more games, like another round of The Mind and then we got to try the prototype of Roll Through the Ages: Medieval Age. This game had tons of pieces that snapped into a grid as you built out your city and we all really enjoyed it! I’m not allowed to show any pics of that one yet though. Then Sen and I fooled around with an alpha prototype of a game based on the comic Mind MGMT and while there were some interesting elements, there wasn’t enough there yet to know what to do next. Bah!

Sunday

Sunday, or as we might end up calling it from now on – Zevday, was jam packed full of Zev-y goodness. Before getting into our day of Zev, I was able to re-pitch FANimals to Helaina from Kid’s Table Board Games. I had pitched this to her at GenCon last year, received some feedback and changed the core mechanics because of it. She really seemed to like the changes and asked to keep he copy and for me to send a copy of the new cards. Done and done!

Then we started our Zevday with our Godzilla game. This is a game we had signed with Toy Vault, who had the license to Godzilla through Toho at the time. Unfortunately Warner Brothers came in and purchased Toho and that made getting the rights a lot more complicated for some reason. So Toy Vault was fine with us pitching the game to another publisher, and knowing that Wizkids has a lot of experience with licenses and also that Zev is a huge Godzilla fan, we all knew this was an important pitch!

The pitch couldn’t have went better as I played this 1 vs. 1 card game against Zev and was about to decimate him, when he pulled out some surprises and came away with the win! He really loved the game and said he’d do it if he can get the license! Huzzah!

Then we showed him our hidden movement game to Zev and he really liked that one as well. 2 for 2! We all went for lunch and then afterwards I showed him a game designed by Don Kirkby and myself called War of the Words. It’s a game about trying to communicate with aliens via all sorts of mini word games. He really liked this one too! He said he’d like to test it with more people but really wants to do it! Wow – 3 for 3! We finished up by pitching In the Hall of the Mountain King and this was the only one that didn’t fit with him or the Wizkids brand. OK, 3 for 4 is not too shabby!

We then finished our Zevday by playing Tichu with him and Stefan Brunelle but are sad to report that we couldn’t repeat our victory from last year! It’s the cards I tells ya – the cards!!

I then found Nathan McNair and Jon Gilmour to show them Skirmishes, a game I designed with Shad Miller. I was excited about this pitch because this game seemed like a good match for this publisher. JF Gagne from Panda joined in as my wing man and we played a 4 player game. The biggest challenge to this pitch was that we were within the last few days for the Dinosaur Island Kickstarter so both Jon and Nathan were preoccupied throughout the pitch. That didn’t seem to matter too much because Nathan showered quite a bit of praise on the game. Sometimes you can never tell if a publisher really likes a game you’re showing them or not, but when they continue to find new things to praise about the game, then I feel pretty confident that they liked it! They took the game back with them to test further!

Monday

I started the day with Sen as we fooled around with our new alpha prototype game that’s set in the Junk Art family and is all about dropping frames in order to score points. It’s still early in development but when Martin from Pretzel saw it, he got very excited and wants to make it his 2020 Pretzel game! Nice!

Then I had a pitch session with Huch! as I wanted to show them FANimals and we played through it twice as we tweaked a rule that made the second game a lot more interesting. It was fun to play with them as well as William Attia (who has a revised Caylus coming out soon!). Then I showed them In the Hall of the Mountain King and we had quite the epic game! Ben really loved it and Britta said she wanted to play it again – which Ben says is always a good sign! Since it was the last day for me at the Gathering, I gave my copy to Huch to take back as Eggertspiele said they really liked it but are going to pass. All of the publishers were interested in our next step with the game – which was to make one central mountain that all players play onto, instead of each player having their own mountain.

Next up was my pitch to Eric Lang from CMON. I showed Skirmishes to him as it seemed to be the kind of game they make. Eric spent a bit of time to explain the new direction that he wants to take CMON and this game no longer fits within what they’re looking for. He liked In the Hall of the Mountain King a bit more but still not a perfect fit. Sometimes rejection can be ok when you get knowledge of the kind of games a publisher wants instead.

We were able to flag down Scott from Renegade and quickly showed him our sales sheets for our games as he didn’t have tons of time. We were able to chat about a game he signed of ours awhile ago and what the future of it will be…which is still uncertain, unfortunately.

Our last pitch was with Tony from USAopoly. While we didn’t have a lot of time, he did express interest in trying some of our games later. He also let us know about a project he’s working on and asked if we’d be interested in bidding on it. Once we knew more about it – we jumped at the chance! We’re very excited about it (and can’t say any more yet)!

And that was all the time I had at the Gathering this year. Sen and I drove back to London late that night so that I could get up 3 hours later and get to the London airport for a 6am flight back to Vancouver.

Oddly enough, that didn’t stop the action on my game at the Gathering! Fabio from CSE Games was there midweek and brought the game Sigils that was designed by Shad Miller and myself to show around. This game was signed last year but he still likes getting it out to show it around and generate interest.

Throughout the time that I was there, I had talked up In the Hall of the Mountain King to Helaina a bunch and she wanted to try it, but we couldn’t get our paths to cross again. Fortunately Sen was returning the following weekend and he coaxed the prototype away from Britta and Ben in order to show it to Helaina. They played it and everyone seemed to really enjoy it! She now wants a copy for herself too! Sweet!

So that’s about it. My short, but whirlwind adventure at the Gathering this year. I didn’t get to play many other games or prototypes – though I did get to see the new 7 Wonders expansion: Armada being played and understand how it works. Looks really cool as this expansion tries to make you care about players other than your direct neighbours.

It’s a lot of work leading up to the Gathering, so I’d like to thank all the playtesters that helped get our games to where they needed to be, and now it’s a lot of work after the Gathering, working on feedback we received!

When I got to the Gathering I got my name badge and a goodie bag full of freebies! The goodie bag had some card games (including a special Tichu deck with new pictures of people who have attended the Gathering in the past), some expansions to other games (like the expansion to fellow GAC member, Roberta Taylor’s Octopus’ Garden) and even the full box version of Two by Two from Valley Games (and designed by fellow GAC member, Rob Bartel!).

The name badge system was awesome as they were colour coded to help you identify people a lot easier. With this information it was easy to identify the publishers as you walked around.

Red Badge: First year attendee (so I had a red badge!). Generally speaking, red badge attendees are always welcomed by others and made to feel at home pretty quickly. People were constantly shaking my hand and welcoming me to the Gathering. It was very nice!

Grey Badge: Anyone who has been to the Gathering for the last 9 years

Black Badge: Anyone who has been to the Gathering for 10 years or more

Blue Badge: Publishers

After I got my badge, I surveyed the layout.

Basically there was a large convention room with tons of tables set up for open gaming. Off to one side were the prize tables! Everyone was encouraged to bring something for the prize table. If you contributed to the prize table, then you could participate in the prize draw at the end of the Gathering. Near the Prize tables was a table full of brochures for local restaurants and more freebies. I found an expansion to Valdora and another for Mondo there! Around the edges of the room were tables where people stored the games they brought.

Oh look, Pierre Poissant-Marquis (right), half of the design team of the game Quebec is playing Belfort!

Generally speaking, anyone could grab any game and start playing at any time, as long as they returned it when they were done with it. Outside of the convention room were a few open areas with more tables ready for open gaming. These tables were used for the poker tournament that happened on one night. Finally, down the hall there were a couple of rooms with a few more tables. During the day we found these to be a bit quieter and therefore made it a favourite spot for us to pitch to publishers. In the late evening one of these rooms were used for a large Werewolf tournament! There were always water stations all over the place to ensure you stayed hydrated throughout the event, so that was nice! On a whole, the hotel and its staff, while a bit gungy (the hotel, not the staff), were prepared and made us feel welcome.

I found Rob and saw that he had a spot along the tables around the edges of the room, so I added my prototypes to his pile. Once we were set up then we were free to either start our own game, or join another group that’s about to start playing a game. It was always easy to find people to play a game of anything! Some of the times it would be a prototype and other times it would be a ‘regular’ game. There were a lot of designers there who, like Rob and I, were looking to get some feedback on their designs, as well as pitch to publishers. Friedemann Friese had a table dedicated to his games for the entire event. I wanted to check them out but never seemed to line up when the table was free. While the hotel offered a mini café in the latter half of the week, most of the meals were either at TGIF, which was in the same hotel, or a restaurant in the casino across the street. Sometimes people with cars would drive others to another local establishment nearby (Duff’s Buffalo wings!) or a few times we walked to a nearby Indian restaurant.

Even though I stayed up late on some days (3am) and woke up early on other days (8am), there were always people playing games somewhere in the convention area! Sleep is for chumps!

There were quite a few tournaments throughout the week ranging from 7 Wonders and Tichu to Loopin’ Louie and poker. The winners of each tournament got first choice of the prize table on Saturday night! Before the prize ceremony there was a flea market. Those that could travel with their assortment of games offered them up for sale to the rest of us. Since most people had to fly, it was a tough decision on what they could buy and what they could pack! I managed to pick up a copy of El Cabellero – a Wolfgang Kramer game that is out of print and one that I’ve been looking to get for a long time now!

[Sen: Really? That’s the single game of my collection that I’ve ever sold, IIRC. Well, you know what they say about one man’s treasure…]

The prize ceremony was really the only time we were all together as one group. The hotel removed all the gaming tables and set up chairs theatre-style to fit all 400 of us in the room. Alan took the microphone and reviewed some things about the next year (I’m already pre-registered!), and then showed off the high-end prizes that people brought for the prize table. Some of the highlights included:

a crokinole board made by fellow GAC member, Mike Kolross, (plus graphic design by another GAC member, Mark Klassen) in the shape of a record with the label being Alan Moon’s Ticket to Ride,

handmade table covering with a Tichu mat on one side and a Can’t Stop and Liar’s Dice on the other – complete with all the dice and cups

The Cookies of Catan – a fully playable and edible game of Settlers of Catan!

Line for Life for an upcoming game called D-Day Dice (designed by another fellow GAC member, Emmanuel Aquin). The Line for Life meant that the person would receive every expansion they ever make for this game for free!

I was called somewhere in the middle of the pack, but I managed to get the exact game I was hoping to pick up – Castles of Burgundy. It was a game I had wanted to pick up in Essen last year, but they sold out too quick!

Up next I’ll get into the specifics of what it’s like to pitch to publishers at the Gathering!

The most exciting thing about Essen is of course, all the new games! I got many of the new hot games and have had time with each of them already! Here’s a rundown of the games I grabbed:

Tournay: This is the next game from the makers of last year’s hit game Troyes. I love Troyes and so I actually pre-ordered Tournay to ensure I’d get a copy. It’s a bit more abstract than Troyes, and the rules are as confusing as Troyes, but once you become familiar with the iconography, it’s a fun game about using your workers (or ‘renting’ someone else’s a la Troyes) to make an efficient engine. It’s almost multiplayer solitaire though there are some ways to be a nuisance to your opponents, though it is limited. I’ve played 3-4 times and would still play it again.

A Few Acres of Snow: Not sure why I got this one. I’m 50/50 on Martin Wallace games, plus this is a war themed deck building game that’s only for 2 players. I guess I was motivated to buy it because I had the chance to get one of the 102 limited edition copies that were at the Fair. It’s a very lengthy game and has some interesting ideas added to the deck building genre (like putting some cards in your hand into a reserve pile to use later), but I’m not a history or war buff, so I’m not dying to play this one again.

Kingdom Builder: I was looking forward to this game from the designer of Dominion as it looked right up my alley. This is a simplified version of Through the Desert – and I mean that in a good way. It’s not as much of a brain burner as TtD is and the playtime is very short. The multiple boards that it comes with, along with the multiple victory conditions means you can play many times with each game having a slightly different feel. It is a bit chaotic – but it’s a great gateway game for non-gamers and families and one I’ll be playing many more times.

Eaten by Zombies: This new deck-building game was all the crazy on Kickstarter and now it’s out. It seems interesting in that players might turn into zombies themselves and turn against the other players. I’ve played it twice, but the terrible rule book made me not understand how to play some aspects of the game and it just wasn’t flowing for me. I’d play it again if I took the time to download the new and improved rules on BGG.

Tok Tok Woodman: This game is a lot of fun for the kids…and adults alike! You use a plastic axe to tap wooden bark off of a precariously balanced tree trunk. It’s fun and Jenga-esque.

Power Grid: First Sparks: This has a lot of similar mechanics to Power Grid but is its own stand-alone game. I’ve played it three times and due to very poorly written rules have just now figured out how to set the game up correctly. The third time was the most interesting, but I somehow couldn’t catch up after screwing up in an early round. Will continue to play it until I get it, though I’m not feeling a lot of love for it yet.

Last Will: I really don’t know much about this game but kept seeing it pop up in the top 25 list and I loved the art! After 3 plays I have to say that this is one kooky fun game. It has some worker placement and then some multiplayer solitaire as you’re building up your own engine. In this game you’re trying to get rid of your money the fastest – which adds some interesting aspects to the game.

Welcome to Walnut Grove: Was pitched as an Agricola kind of game when you don’t have time for a full Agricola game. Worker placement with some tile placement – sounds good to me! After 3 plays I do like it even though there are a few randomy things to it (initial turn order screwed me out of any possible move in the first round, plus the coins are valued 0 to 2 and are always drawn randomly). I will definitely play this again as it’s quick and is an interesting puzzle.

Puerto Rico: Special Edition: I’ve never been a huge fan of this game, but only because I played with people who were really good at it, but they weren’t really good at helping noobs – so I didn’t have a good time with it. But it’s always seemed like a game I should like so I’m going to give it another shot – now with a super amazing looking edition. I’ve played it once and am finally getting to understand the game! I will be playing this quite a few more times.

King’s Vineyard: For buying Tok Tok and Eaten by Zombies, I was able to buy this game for 10 Euros and ever since Bordeaux I’ve been keeping my eyes out for wine themed games and decided to grab this one too. One of the few Essen games that I haven’t played yet.

Carcasonne/Dominion expansion: 1 new set of Dominion cards called Carcasonne (the English variant is called Walled Village), which is a nice tribute to the hit game. Plus I got another Dominion expansion called the Governor, which looks fun. Also got a new two tiled, 1 meeple expansion to Carcasonne, but it was in German so I’ll have to wait for English rules before playing.

7 Wonders Catan expansion: A new Wonder/starting board with an homage to Settlers of Catan. Neat. Haven’t tried yet. I did get it signed by Klaus Tueber though!!

Friday: A 1 player game from Freisse. It was getting some pretty good buzz and was pretty cheap. Haven’t tried this one yet.

Dungeon Fighter and Cryptids TV: Got these for Sen as it’s his birthday coming up! Not too sure about either, but Dungeon Fighter was constantly in the top 25 throughout the Fair. We’ll see what he thinks of each one!

Well, that wraps up all the stories I have from my Essen Adventures. It was full of fun and excitement and I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. Here’s hoping everything works out so I can go again next year!

The biggest honour a board game can get is to be nominated, and of course to win, the annual Spiel des Jahres Award (Game of the Year award). Well, the 2011 nominations have been announced in the three categories. For the Kid’s Game of the Year (Kinderspiel des Jahres), these games have been nominated:

Everyone is predicting that 7 Wonders will win this one, and for good reason – it’s that good. As a reminder – it’s the only game that was voted higher than Train of Thought at BGG.con last year!

Finally, the coveted Speil des Jahres nominations are:

Asara (designed by Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling, published by Ravensburger and Rio Grande Games)

Forbidden Island (designed by Matt Leacock, published by Gamewright and Schmidt)

Qwirkle (designed by Susan McKinley Ross, published by Mindware and Schmidt)

I’ve played Forbidden Island once, and though it’s a rework of Matt Leacock’s Pandemic, I do think I like it more as it feels more streamlined. I just picked up Asara yesterday and now am even more excited to play it! I haven’t played Qwirkle, but have seen it around. I’m not sure how Qwirkle qualifies as this game came out in 2006..? I predict Asara will win this one (I really love Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling games!).

I had time to play some games while I was there of course and here are my likes and dislikes:

Likes:

Troyes – Warning – try to get someone who has played the game to teach you the rules! The rules are very convoluted and hard to understand. The game is also convoluted and hard to understand, but it gets easier and easier as the game progresses and by the end of the game I found myself really enjoying the mechanics. The game has players rolling different coloured dice, depending on how many of their workers they place in the different coloured zones, and then using the numbers on those dice to fulfill specific actions. What makes this game not as luck based as other dice-rolling games is that you can buy other players’ dice from them. So, not intuitive at first, but a game I would like to play again.

Tikal 2 – Surprise, surprise – the sequel to my favourite game is a lot of fun! The similarities between the two are mostly thematic and the fact that hexagonal tiles are placed on the board – that’s about it. So if you’re one of the few who don’t like Tikal, then you should still try out Tikal 2! Players sail their boat around the perimeter of the board and pick up one tile that gives them a specific action to do in the temple. In the temple players are going from room to room placing flags and collecting points. Gone are the 10 point action point system from Tikal, and instead players are free to go anywhere on the board that they want, as long as they have the right coloured key. Overall a fun game (did I mention that I managed to squeak out a win in the end?) that I will definitely be buying!

Eminent Domain – the big deck building game from Tasty Minstrel that has received twice as much funding from Kickstarter as they needed. The game is only in prototype form, but other people had printed out a copy for themselves and brought it with them – so it was being played by a lot of people throughout the convention. I’m not a huge fan of space games, but there are some great mechanics in this game that makes it not similar to Dominion at all. I enjoyed the fact that you could specialize in one area, and that players could follow the actions of other players. That kept everyone interested on everyone else’s turn. I didn’t like that the tech cards that you can research were too confusing for a newbie to understand. Because of that I decided to not specialize at all in Research and that was a big mistake and I knew I lost early on in the game. Still, with some minor refining, the game could be made more accessible to us newbs and will probably be a big hit for Tasty Minstrel.

Rattus – While it’s a bit unpredictable, I enjoyed the theme and variability the game has based on which roles you use in the game. Players place their player markers in different regions and then move the plague indicator to a region. If there are rat tokens and player markers in that region, then they are turned over to see if any player markers die because of the plague. Fortunately players can recruit various roles to help them, though the more roles they use, the higher the probability that a player’s markers will be infected by the plague. Interesting, but possibly a little too unpredictable. I’ll play it again though.

Dislikes:

Merkator: This is Rosenberg’s next game after Agricola, Le Havre and Gates of Louyang. The only good thing I can say about this game is that it at least doesn’t feel like a derivative of any of these games. I like Agricola and Le Havre is pretty good, but there are a lot of shared mechanics between those and even Gates of Louyang. In Merkator players move a shared marker around the world in order to collect a specific resource. While he’s there a player can fulfill a goal card if it’s for that location and he has the proper resources. Did I mention there are about 16 different resources? The game feels very abstract and has no theme at all. If I wanted to play a spreadsheet, I’d just go to work. Boo.

Games that were getting good buzz but I didn’t get a chance to try yet:

Navegador – seemed like I would enjoy this new Rondel based game.

K2 – a very themey game about mountain climbing that was getting some good buzz.

7 Wonders – this was the big hit of convention, though it had its haters as well. I learned the rules but never had a chance to play it. It plays up to 7 players but probably is best with 4-5. You only ever interact with a player on either side of you so some people didn’t like that. Almost everyone liked that it could play up to 7 in under an hour though. Still can’t wait to try it!

Hansa Teutonica – I saw some people playing this and it seemed to generate a lot of positive buzz, though it doesn’t look like a game I’d like. I’ll reserve judgement of course, until I’ve played it – which I want to do.

Nuremberc – Had the rules explained to me and it seems simple enough but I’m worried that the theme is irrelevant. Looks pretty, as it’s illustrated by our friend Josh Cappel! I’ll try it when it comes out.

I managed to increase the size of my game collection as well as I purchased the following games from either the vendors or from the flea market that was held on Saturday:

Grand Cru – the new game about making wine. I got this to play with my friend Matt who’s also making a wine game – which unfortunately is becoming a saturated theme!

Merchants in the Middle Ages – a ‘new’ game from Kramer. It’s really just a reprint of Die Handler, which I haven’t played but I’ve been happy with Kramer’s game more often that I haven’t.

El Capitan – an older Kramer game that I never played – but as I mentioned above, it’s Kramer!

Gheos – a tile laying game – which I always like.

Aton – a 2-player game from Queen games. This was one of the free games that everyone could choose from. I heard this was good!